Rapid gear decay

babylon

SaibotLiu wrote: »

Ive yet to see you address the fact that many players are having no difficulties saving money as it is.

I'll address it - the people having no difficulty saving gold aren't the ones who will be affected by gold sinks anyway. Gold sinks only affect the poor.

Keeping gold sinks high for basic things like repair bills will only widen the gap and make a bunch of people (those who don't play the economy in games) very unhappy.

b101uk

All I can say is, up until the VR1 I was making armour every 3 to 5 levels (mix of medium and heavy armour) and just repairing it at a vendor when selling loot and deconstructing stuff for martials etc, most of the time its 60g to 250g to repair and there is no shortage to getting gold for bank/bag/horse inventory space along with repairs through the course of normal questing without doing any grinding/farming whatsoever.

That said I must have spent 35k to 40k in gold on repairs going from level 1 through to VR2, so even with that in mind there is no intrinsic shortage of gold unless you start paying silly money for items being sold by people in chat or have omitted some of the crafting skills thus making you dependent on dropped equipment and or venders etc.

Me I have to repair, as I use 3x 3-piece sets which can only be made at specific places.

Shimizu

From the entire 1-50 experience, I never repaired a single piece of armor.

The cost of doing so was exorbidant and well in excess of what could be earned playing in the time it took the gear to break, this is assuming without dying. An hour of gameplay, and the gear is trash. Oh *** ***, 2000 gold to repair it? Selling all loot gets me half of that.

So, I've been playing with disposable gear. Sometimes my gear would actually last me the two levels between tiers, but after about level 30 this wasn't really applicable and I would have to scrap it sooner. So basically yep, every even level, back to the blacksmiths table to make a new (white) set and slap it on, since upgrading/repairing it was just economically pointless.

I have no issue with gear having durability and/or decay, or with there being repair costs. The fact that you're losing armor rating as its damaged is a bit annoying, but even that can be dealt with. But the rate of damage is absolutely absurd. In wearing cloth on a healer who never even got HIT my gear still managed to become trash.

It really shouldn't be more viable/efficient to make a whole new set of gear every couple of hours as opposed to the goldsink repair cost, but it is.

I've recently gotten into veteran levels and thought right okay, its going to take longer between upgrades now, I'll make a 'nice' set of armor. Played for a few days and honestly, repair bills just from doing my thing, questing, etc. have bankrupted me. It really needs to be looked into.

Septimus_Magna

I'm I the only one who thinks it's very strange a lvl50 blacksmith can't even repair his own gear? Crafting is fun and pretty rewarding but some aspects are just a little unrealistic and immersion breaking.

I think it would be completely fair if you had to spend a steel ingot to repair x% (small percentage) of a steel armor item, repairing could even give you IP if ZOS was feeling generous.

SaibotLiu

Jeremy wrote: »

SaibotLiu wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

SaibotLiu wrote: »

The repair bill serves a valuable purpose as a gold sink. If you diminish this significantly, suddenly everyone is available to save large quantities of gold, and your economy goes to crap. .

This game's economy is already crap ^^

And to be honest - at least in respect to players who have not yet reached level 50 - it would probably be a more effective gold sink if they made it more affordable. Because in its current state, many players just neglect to repair at all and just wait it out until they get new armor.

Either one is fine, you're either purging gold from the economy, or they're using new armor rather than selling them. Either way something is being purged from circulation, items or gold. To stop flooding the market with either is the point.

Nobody can say at this point that the economy is crap, there is no way to observe it effectively. There is no worldwide AH, no one has no idea the average price something is selling for. Thats just an ignorant statement. In 3 months when things even off, then we'll know.

The economy is crap Saibo. I don't have to wait 3 months to see that. And these extremely high repair bills have done nothing to prevent it.

And you are being really optimistic to think it's going to all get better in 3 months unless some significant changes are put in place. I would say naïve. But I guess in a couple of months we'll see which of us is right ^^

As far as your purging old armor from circulation comment - I don't understand what you mean.

Players would likely be putting on new armor anyway, with or without these insane repair bills. The only difference being they don't bother repairing their current armor before they put on new ones because it's just not worth it many times. And that means less gold into the sink. Not more.

I never said anything is going to be "better in 3 months". I said it will take that long before players get a collective idea on how much items are worth, because in the economy we have word of mouth and perception set the market. With a public AH its a simple matter of supply and demand.

I'll put it bluntly, anyone here (especially you) who is whining about their repair bill has no business pretending that they have any idea what the current state of the economy is like. If you had even an rudimentary grasp of the economy, you'd have enough money for it not to be an issue. You cant be eating your cake when you're too poor to afford it.

Don't think you can simply circumvent a gold sink for the rest of your in game life. Unless you plan on never wearing armor. Your toon will remain permanently gimped at end game, or you'll pay the damn bill, I suppose the choice is yours.

As someone said already, everyone trashes armor while early levelling, nobody would expect you not to. If you're in your 20's rolling with purple and gold gear you're stupid anyways. When you hit end game, you WILL repair, or you will be inconsequential to groups or PVP. Up to you, again.

vyal

Shimizu wrote: »

From the entire 1-50 experience, I never repaired a single piece of armor.

The cost of doing so was exorbitant and well in excess of what could be earned playing in the time it took the gear to break, this is assuming without dying. An hour of gameplay, and the gear is trash. Oh *** ***, 2000 gold to repair it? Selling all loot gets me half of that.

So, I've been playing with disposable gear. Sometimes my gear would actually last me the two levels between tiers, but after about level 30 this wasn't really applicable and I would have to scrap it sooner. So basically yep, every even level, back to the blacksmiths table to make a new (white) set and slap it on, since upgrading/repairing it was just economically pointless.

I have no issue with gear having durability and/or decay, or with there being repair costs. The fact that you're losing armor rating as its damaged is a bit annoying, but even that can be dealt with. But the rate of damage is absolutely absurd. In wearing cloth on a healer who never even got HIT my gear still managed to become trash.

It really shouldn't be more viable/efficient to make a whole new set of gear every couple of hours as opposed to the goldsink repair cost, but it is.

I've recently gotten into veteran levels and thought right okay, its going to take longer between upgrades now, I'll make a 'nice' set of armor. Played for a few days and honestly, repair bills just from doing my thing, questing, etc. have bankrupted me. It really needs to be looked into.

Bolded this. So much this.

Zenimax/Bethesda: it is cheaper for me to make entirely new gear, every two levels, than it is to repair it. This cannot (and should not) be working as intended.

Several solutions/questions:
Reduce the rate of armor damage to half of what it is now. That's a good starting point. I suspect there is a significant bug in how armor damage is calculated, and you need to re-examine this code to find it.
Is it affecting melee only? Heavy armor only? Those caught in AoE only? Falling damage? Spell damage? Physical damage only?
OR
Tell us your design goals for armor damage. Is it an anti-botting technique? Is it an anti-farming technique? Is it meant to be the primary gold sink for removing currency in the game at higher levels? How much of a players income, if they spend their entire play time in-combat, is intended to be sucked away by repair bills?

SaibotLiu

babylon wrote: »

SaibotLiu wrote: »

Ive yet to see you address the fact that many players are having no difficulties saving money as it is.

I'll address it - the people having no difficulty saving gold aren't the ones who will be affected by gold sinks anyway. Gold sinks only affect the poor.

Keeping gold sinks high for basic things like repair bills will only widen the gap and make a bunch of people (those who don't play the economy in games) very unhappy.

Which brings us full circle, we should make the game easier so that everyone is the same.

To hell with meaningful mechanics, forget about a functioning economy. Lets make it as vanilla as possible so that no child is left behind.

Put simply, if your gear is taking hits and you're not making money at same time to cover it, what the hell are you doing then? EVERYTHING in this game nets you loot. There's not some secret that I know that the poor people don't know. I hardly sell anything on the AH. I should add that 80% of my loot is deconstructed for mats. The only thing I sell is jewellery and white heavy armor. Everything else gets torn down. Most people don't even feel the need to farm in this game and have plenty of gold. There is something wrong that people are doing. They don't want to think and they just want to run from mob to mob and quest to quest without planning. They want to spend their gold on god knows what without accounting for their upkeep. Now we have to make it everyone else's problem because they play like a brain dead chimp?

Cool story bro.

b101uk

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

I'm I the only one who thinks it's very strange a lvl50 blacksmith can't even repair his own gear?.........

To be honest it is a little odd in some ways – not withstanding repair kits which can be used, however in the real world it generally take a higher degree of skill (and sometimes time) to repair something than to initially make something, so the skillset needed to make something doesn’t nesaseraly include the skillset needed to repair it.

e.g. most people who work in car factories assembling cars don’t have the skillset to repair them, disassemble them or otherwise do formative work on them etc etc etc.

That said, I am sure they could use trait research as a means to perturb “skill” in a specific craft with respect to repair cost along with a something to unlock with a skill point or two, perhaps then allowing “repair” using base materials rather than repair kits or other vendors once you have achieved a sufficient research etc in a specific branch of crafting.

Then all that would be needed is a bombproof way for person A to repair person B item/equipment when near a crafting station in return for gold

Yankee

I finally stopped repairing quest leveling gear. I just swap it out when the next green piece drops. Occasionally I will craft something.

Since I am leveling wearing light armor anyway, I just started using my Sorc skill lightning form when anything gets in melee range, which buffs my armor rating way beyond what my cloth gear at 100% would do.

Because I have noticed the gear repair costs seem to have gone up with no deaths and mostly not even getting hit.

This is something ZOS should look into. If it is deliberate then I think it is too much.

Jeremy

SaibotLiu wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

SaibotLiu wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

SaibotLiu wrote: »

The repair bill serves a valuable purpose as a gold sink. If you diminish this significantly, suddenly everyone is available to save large quantities of gold, and your economy goes to crap. .

This game's economy is already crap ^^

And to be honest - at least in respect to players who have not yet reached level 50 - it would probably be a more effective gold sink if they made it more affordable. Because in its current state, many players just neglect to repair at all and just wait it out until they get new armor.

Either one is fine, you're either purging gold from the economy, or they're using new armor rather than selling them. Either way something is being purged from circulation, items or gold. To stop flooding the market with either is the point.

Nobody can say at this point that the economy is crap, there is no way to observe it effectively. There is no worldwide AH, no one has no idea the average price something is selling for. Thats just an ignorant statement. In 3 months when things even off, then we'll know.

The economy is crap Saibo. I don't have to wait 3 months to see that. And these extremely high repair bills have done nothing to prevent it.

And you are being really optimistic to think it's going to all get better in 3 months unless some significant changes are put in place. I would say naïve. But I guess in a couple of months we'll see which of us is right ^^

As far as your purging old armor from circulation comment - I don't understand what you mean.

Players would likely be putting on new armor anyway, with or without these insane repair bills. The only difference being they don't bother repairing their current armor before they put on new ones because it's just not worth it many times. And that means less gold into the sink. Not more.

I never said anything is going to be "better in 3 months". I said it will take that long before players get a collective idea on how much items are worth, because in the economy we have word of mouth and perception set the market. With a public AH its a simple matter of supply and demand.

I'll put it bluntly, anyone here (especially you) who is whining about their repair bill has no business pretending that they have any idea what the current state of the economy is like. If you had even an rudimentary grasp of the economy, you'd have enough money for it not to be an issue. You cant be eating your cake when you're too poor to afford it.

Don't think you can simply circumvent a gold sink for the rest of your in game life. Unless you plan on never wearing armor. Your toon will remain permanently gimped at end game, or you'll pay the damn bill, I suppose the choice is yours.

As someone said already, everyone trashes armor while early levelling, nobody would expect you not to. If you're in your 20's rolling with purple and gold gear you're stupid anyways. When you hit end game, you WILL repair, or you will be inconsequential to groups or PVP. Up to you, again.

I purposely pointed out before reaching level 50 to avoid this predicted counter-argument in an earlier post. So we are debating a non-issue. At endgame - yes, it will function as a gold sink. But before reaching level 50 - it won't and it will actually have the opposite effect. That was my point.

And It has nothing to do with trashing your armor either. It has to do with not repairing your armor as you level up because of the costs. Better to just wait till the next upgrade. Nor does it take a rudimentary grasp of the economy to come to that conclusion. It has to do with the fact it's too damn expensive and isn't worth the costs. And that would be the case rather an auction house was present or not.

And we are discussing the subject matter of this thread. I don't know why you think this is whining. If conversations about repair costs being too high bothers you so much, perhaps you should not join threads about it.

If I misunderstood what you were saying about the economy being better in 3 months than I take it back. But I re-read what you said, and it gives that impression.

NextGame

SaibotLiu wrote: »

There is no worldwide AH,

This is pretty much why the game economy is crap

aipex8_ESO

I think there are two separate conversations going on in this thread. I have no problem with the amount of gold I spend on repairs, and I do repair my gear (I tend to make a set of green gear (3 sets) and wear it for 4 to 6 levels. My question is was the decay rate purposefully increased? Is it a bug? Or, does it naturally increase as you reach higher levels and always has? The decay rate seemed to jump up a lot in the last couple days, so I don't think it's the later, but I did just tick past level 40, and maybe that's the magic level.

Cernow

b101uk wrote: »

To be honest it is a little odd in some ways – not withstanding repair kits which can be used, however in the real world it generally take a higher degree of skill (and sometimes time) to repair something than to initially make something, so the skillset needed to make something doesn’t nesaseraly include the skillset needed to repair it.

e.g. most people who work in car factories assembling cars don’t have the skillset to repair them, disassemble them or otherwise do formative work on them etc etc etc.

You're comparing manufacturing to artisan crafting. Workers engaged in the manufacturing process usually have a specialised skill set and stick to a certain part of the process. Whereas an artisan such as a Blacksmith or Armourer is usually skilled in the whole process, and so skilled in both creation and repair.

It seems very odd that the game should allow Alchemists, Mystics and general vendor NPCs to repair armour when players skilled in in Blacksmithing or Clothing can't. This seems to be a design decision that has more to do with creating a gold sink than being grounded in any sense of believable reality.

A game with large gold sinks that is overrun by bots and gold spammers - who could have seen that coming eh?

Mizumauz

Well let's be honest, what the heck is the point of armor in this game before max veteran rank? Well, apparently it's not for wearing-it's merely for deconstructing.
Gear is more of a luxury than a necessity.

Ospoon

That's what I don't get. Why it's 20x cheaper to make a brand new set of gear, including buying enchants, up to max levels. The gold sink for repairing gear is way too steep. It seems to have zero level curve to it, just a flat rate for each piece.

The only reason I have repaired gear personally is when I just don't feel like muling 5x to get all the mats together to make new stuff.

They either need to adjust the repair costs, or people will simply start getting exasperated when they have no gold for anything else, and use it as just another valid reason to leave.

Malediktus

I have never repaired a set of armor so far. With 100 bars of x being available for 600 gold in guild stores, its much cheaper to make a new set than spending 1500 gold or more for repairs.

Paske

I play DK and Sorc.

DK is tank, of all things, with 0 armor.

You may curse / spit / slap me for this obscenity, but one normal run in a dungeon costs me 600-800g in repair at lvl 15. Thats just way too much gold for a simple low lvl dungeon.

Never complained about it considering devs have bigger issues to tangle with.

Filena

I hope they give a look into this, if i start to just sell all item for repair, this will make me quit very fast, i hate very fast decay, i would prefere item value less and get less gold with reduce the rate of decay.

starkerealm

Paske wrote: »

Never complained about it considering devs have bigger issues to tangle with.

I know we've got people throwing around "gamebreaking" for things like their journal not showing every checked book... but the fact is, this is a gamebreaking issue. It actually undermines the primary game element of killing things and taking their ***.

If you'd asked me a month ago if I'd be unsubbing in the first month, I would have said, "are you f---ing crazy?" Now... "probably not, but if this is intended behavior I've got no interest in playing the game."

Having your items disintegrate while wandering around makes getting gear... or even picking a type of armor, pointless. I mean, why am I wasting time researching traits or upgrading my crafting skills when it's just going to be an aesthetic change, and I could get those same options from pounding the snot out of enemies until I get the drop I want?

Kyosji

Had to repair twice yesterday, at level 31, I had to pay over 5000 gold for about 3 hours worth of play. I doubt this is working as intended.

Drazhar14

I wouldn't mind high repair fees if my gear wasn't made of paper! Seriously, the decay rate is way too fast. You could play flawlessly and have all your gear still get destroyed rapidly. Either change gear so it only decays when you die, have it decay much slower and only when taking a large chunk of damage, or lower repair costs.

Paske

This seems to me, at this still infantile stage of game, more of a ballance issue then a show stopping bug.

We are simply not yet at a stage where we can debate fine tuning and balancing item decay so that armor could be useable thorough game. Like blue / epic / legendary gear being less pron to decay. Also how much decay stopping stats do you need on gear to reach "sweet spot" ( I have seen gear with stats that prevent decay with chance percentage ).

No one is arguing this is not an important issue, it is. However I just do not feel this is something that needs to be dealt with immediately.

I have no doubt decay will get looked into and soon. Just that game is fighting on so many fronts it is hard for developers to focus on fine tuning when there are great problems to be tackeled with.

As far as stopping my subscription, I see no need for this.
Especially not for decay issues.

Then again I am on of the older players ( age wise ) that have been playing games for a while now and when I enjoy a game, few bugs will not stop me from enjoying.

Cernow

One partial solution to the problem would be to make items with the Sturdy trait less prone to decay from all sources, not just decay from defeat. That way, players who are concerned about repair bills can forego other stats if they wish to put together a set of more resilient gear to keep repair costs down.

starkerealm

Paske wrote: »

This seems to me, at this still infantile stage of game, more of a ballance issue then a show stopping bug.

We are simply not yet at a stage where we can debate fine tuning and balancing item decay so that armor could be useable thorough game. Like blue / epic / legendary gear being less pron to decay. Also how much decay stopping stats do you need on gear to reach "sweet spot" ( I have seen gear with stats that prevent decay with chance percentage ).

No one is arguing this is not an important issue, it is. However I just do not feel this is something that needs to be dealt with immediately.

I have no doubt decay will get looked into and soon. Just that game is fighting on so many fronts it is hard for developers to focus on fine tuning when there are great problems to be tackeled with.

As far as stopping my subscription, I see no need for this.
Especially not for decay issues.

Then again I am on of the older players ( age wise ) that have been playing games for a while now and when I enjoy a game, few bugs will not stop me from enjoying.

Again, in case there was some failure to understand, I f---ing hate games where you rent your gear. Can't stand them. It's one of the s---iest F2P tactics out there. If TESO is moving to that, I'm done. I have no interest in a game than handles it's itemization that way.

I do most of my MMO gaming with my significant other. This means it's not just enough that one of us is happy with the state of the game, we both need to be. She was hit by the bank bug. We've been stalling out on delves because of the rampant bots. Which is frustrating for both of us. I know for a fact she hasn't logged in the last 24 hours.

If this isn't fixed, it takes out a major positive feedback element for the game, the idea that the items you get have some gameplay value. And, again, it will kill the game for us, even if it's just, as you seem to believe, a mater of balance and tuned a little too high.

As it stands now, I can't even afford to log in on any of my alts. They don't have enough gold for me to actually play and use any gear. Now, you can take your superiority play and go around questing naked, but that's not the game I signed up for, and it's not a game I particularly want to play.

EDIT: Turns out there's a conjugation of s--- that doesn't make the word filter.

EDIT: It also doesn't help that I'm currently basically stuck at my computer waiting for my toe to heal from minor surgery. Meaning I actually want to get in there and play, I'm also aware that if I did, I'd end up completely broke in game. Which isn't appealing.

Kyosji

You know what, here's an idea. If I'm supposed to be some awesome crafter that can make green blue purple and gold armor, why the hell can I not sew a patch in my armor?

This game needs to let us repair our armor. Just make it where you need like half of the main crafting material it took to make and let us repair our crap.

roney.jeremyub17_ESO

I have to agree though, the gear decay in this game is absolutely nuts. I didn't pay a lot of attention at lower levels, but post level 40 it just started getting insane. I can literally down 3 mobs in a few seconds without them so much as touching me (often without evening kiting away from them) and have my total durability drop 2%. Seriously over the top.

I can't even imagine what this'll look like in a raid. Sorry, we cleared the trash.. none of us died.. but oh, we gotta go repair all our gear before we fight the boss because we're all at 50% and our armor is only half effective.

Suggested fix: Remove armor decay based on dura level. This will only make raiders have to repair after every single wipe, and essentially removes the purpose of dura in the first place. You might as well just drop us to 0% after each wipe without this change. Also, cut the decay rate down to about 1/4 of what is at now. Maybe even less, as I shouldn't need to repair every 30 minutes without any deaths.

aipex8_ESO

Yeah, if this hasn't changed, then 40 must be the magic level where it kicks into high gear. I understand that it's a gold sink, but maybe have the decay stay the same, but the cost of repair go up. So if I'm level 10 and questing (without dying) for 1 hour, I lose 5% and it costs me 100 gold. If I'm level 40 I still only lose 5% but it costs 800 gold.

babylon

SaibotLiu wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

SaibotLiu wrote: »

Ive yet to see you address the fact that many players are having no difficulties saving money as it is.

I'll address it - the people having no difficulty saving gold aren't the ones who will be affected by gold sinks anyway. Gold sinks only affect the poor.

Keeping gold sinks high for basic things like repair bills will only widen the gap and make a bunch of people (those who don't play the economy in games) very unhappy.

Which brings us full circle, we should make the game easier so that everyone is the same...

Cool story bro.

I'm not your bro.

No it isn't about "making the game easier" - way to divert attention from the real issue by throwing insults and irrelevancies instead of directly addressing the issue I raised...that gold sinks only affect the poor.

The repair costs are too high for the amount of gold a normal person can make - that is one who does not spend their game time playing the economy. If this game requires people to play the economy to survive in the game then game design is at fault.

Knottypine

I'm really not liking the way decay is currently handled. As someone mentioned, it's difficult to keep up while trying to save up for some storage slots. I never repair my gear simply because it's too expensive. Unfortunately when I find something decent, it becomes obsolete way to quickly. Not like I can build up a repairing skill and repair myself.

When the time comes that I'm high level and have much higher level gear, I don't want to just keep trashing it...

Cernow

I've just been watching some bots farming outdoor mobs in The Rift. They are naked apart from a weapon (which of course doesn't decay). They seem to be handling things just fine. And if they happen to die, well it's not going to cost them anything anyway.

What a perverse irony it is that genuine players are paying extortionate repair bills to play the game "as intended", while bots roam naked filling the coffers of the gold spammers. Totally broken.